The Banff World Television Festival has become one of the premiere forums for TV producers, docmakers and show creators to generate buzz for their work through its various pitch competitions and opportunities, having helped spawn titles including Being Ian, Puppets Who Kill and the upcoming kids series Roll Play.

This year, the CTV Documart, iPitch and Pitch It initiatives are returning to the festival, but with some revisions to the latter two.

According to Andra Sheffer, executive director of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund – the sponsor of iPitch, designed to help develop TV shows’ interactive components – broadcasters are required to accompany the pitching producer at the competition as of this year.

‘The pitch has to be a joint pitch between the producer and broadcaster, and the broadcaster has to tell us why this project is important to their programming,’ says Sheffer, who through the Bell Fund has encouraged broadcasters to think interactively.

‘It’s been an uphill battle,’ she admits, ‘but in the last year or two there has been a switch in the minds of broadcasters, recognizing they had to start programming content for more than one platform.’

Four shows were picked from an undisclosed but – according to Sheffer – modest crop to compete for the $10,000 iPitch prize. Among them are The Hive by Keith Clarkson of Xenophile Media, pitching with Bravo!, and Are We There Yet?, an interactive travel show for kids to be pitched by Blair Powers of Sinking Ship Entertainment with YTV/Treehouse.

Sinking Ship’s J.J. Johnson scored at last year’s New Players Children’s pitching session with his spiel for Roll Play, a puppet-driven show encouraging kids to participate while viewing. It received immediate broadcaster attention and is currently in production, set to air on Treehouse and Radio-Canada in the fall.

‘I did the pitch, and after, six or seven broadcasters came up to give me their cards and say they were interested,’ Johnson recalls. ‘To have broadcasters approaching us instead of us approaching them was a thrilling experience.’

Johnson will this year pitch the series Dino Dan, hosted by Daniel Cook, the dinosaur-loving star of Sinking Ship’s This Is Daniel Cook (a copro with marblemedia), as one of five projects selected from 34 applications for Pitch It.

The kids programming part of Pitch It is the only one without a prize attached, unable as it was to secure a sponsor this year. Alliance Atlantis stepped up elsewhere, however, with Life Network sponsoring the reality and lifestyle Pitch It segment, featuring six selected projects from 61 entries, and Showcase backing the drama and comedy heat, with six pitchers plucked from 75 applications. Both have $10,000 prizes attached.

But the big money for pitchers at Banff is on reserve for docmakers at the CTV Documart, with prizes for the top three winners of $50,000, $30,000 and $20,000.

This year, Montreal’s EyeSteelFilms will have two projects in competition, with producer Mila Aung-Thwin pitching Inventing the Future: Atanasoff, Mauchly and the First Computer, and Daniel Cross and Terryll Loffler handling Asphalt Cowboys. They will compete against Dead to Rights: Burial of a Billion Dollar Funeral from David Lint at CineNova Productions, The Dolphin Dealer by Leigh Bedgley of Omni Film Productions, Devil in a G-String by Anne Pick at Real to Reel Productions and Web Warriors by Edward Peill of Tell Tale Productions.

With prolific doc producer Laszlo Barna moderating, CTV’s VP of documentaries Bob Culbert anticipates a compelling sixth year for Documart, which drew more than 80 applicants.

‘Documart is a nice piece of theater,’ says Culbert. ‘It has become one of the exciting events at Banff because the stakes are high. What’s exciting for me is that we get a first option in looking at the [winning] projects after the development stage.’

Recently aired CTV docs Hockey Brawl: Battle on Thin Ice by Jeff Newman, and EyeSteelFilms’ Chairman George are both products of Documart pitches.

But win or lose, there is a certain prestige that goes along with having pitched at Banff.

‘It gives that extra leverage to go on and raise more money,’ says Sheffer.